TapeItUpIsQuiteProbablytheFirstEverEndlessTaperoniOS

You’d be forgiven for thinking that most lane-based endless running games on iOS pretty much look the same. Indeed, each of them seems to be little more than a slight variation on the formula of bipedal characters, from teenage hooligans to little yellow henchmen, running from side to side and away from some form of threat. But a recently released iOS game called Tape It Up dares to be different, seeing as its playable character is, of all things, a tape dispenser.

Become a tape master in this oddly satisfying vertical jumping action scroller

Tape It Up may very well be the first ever “endless taper” on iOS. In the game, you have to guide a tape dispenser as it jumps between the boxes that it has to tape up along a warehouse conveyor belt.

This vertical scrolling arcade game has you swiping left or right to make the tape dispenser jump from one box to another, and tapping repeatedly to speed up the intrepid taper’s motion across boxes. Be careful, though, because if you swipe too early or too late, or tap too long, the tape dispenser is liable to fall to its untimely demise on the conveyor belt and it’s game over.

Since this is an endless game, albeit one with a rather absurd premise, your goal in Tape It Up is to last as long as you can. To help you achieve game longevity, you can collect certain letters along the way, either directly on your path or from special slot machine-like lucky boxes. If you spell the word FEVER, you’ll go into fever mode and, for a few seconds, you’ll be practically flying and amassing points across the conveyor belt. If you want to challenge yourself, you can choose to hop into a box that takes you into the game’s hard mode.

Along the way, you can also collect coins, which you can spend on unlocking more than 40 bizarre characters to play as, such as a paint roller, an audio cassette, a film reel, and even a roll of bacon (because why not?) — some of which have their own themes to match. You need quite a few coins (1,000, to be exact) to stand a chance at winning a new character, but apart from picking them up as you play, you can earn coins by watching video ads.

Rather than going the easy route of looking and playing like most other endless running games out there, Tape It Up seeks out to stand out with its delightfully odd take on the genre, starting with a tape dispenser as the playable character and a conveyor belt as the setting, and continuing with outlandish unlockable characters and themes. Add to that a winning combination of pixel art and chiptune-inspired soundtrack, and you have a fun and addictive endless taper indeed.

Tape It Up is available now on the App Store for free, with in-app purchases for unlocking additional characters. It’s compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and it comes with an iMessage app featuring animated stickers of adhesive tape and some of the characters from the game.